Dirty Pots

I really love a good soup. And, with fall in the air (a little bit!) I'm really looking forward to soup season. One of my favorite recipes is for "mexican soup." It's not really mexican, but it's spicy, has corn, beans, rotel and taco seasoning- so it meets American standards for mexican! It's yummy, easy to make, and easy to freeze for later. That, and the fact that you get to add sour cream, cheese and tortilla chips when you eat it makes it top on my list of winter meals. Because it sits and simmers, and occasionally I get distracted and forget to stir it often enough, the bottom sometimes gets charred and stuck to the bottom of my lovely teal Le Cruset pot. No matter how good of a cook you are, I'm sure at some point you have burnt something to the bottom of a pot. So, you know how hard it is to clean. Had I not made the soup in my favorite pot, I might have been tempted to just throw it out rather than go through all the hard work to clean it. Hold that thought in your head a moment.

In chapter 24, God is telling Ezekiel to make soup. It would have been a good soup, because God told him to use the best ingredients, but God also told him to let it get charred, burnt, and stuck to the pot. Again, this was an illustration to the people of Jerusalem what their fate would be. They thought they were the "choice meat" because they had escaped being taken into captivity when the Babylonians invaded the first time. Protected inside the favorite pot, Jerusalem, nothing would touch them. Instead, the pot became their place of destruction, and the entire city became so encrusted with burnt on sin that it would not come clean. Our lives can also become encrusted with sin. When we face tough times, God can use them to burn away unnecessary priorities and diversions. We can choose to look at those tough times as an opportunity to reexamine our lives and figure out what really matters.

Back up to Chapter 23. Remember reading how the nation of Israel split into a northern and southern kingdom? Just so we are clear, Ezekiel is prophesying in the southern kingdom, Judah, which contained Jerusalem. The people of Judah looked down on the kingdom to the north as being much less "holy" than they were- after all, in Judah they were still in David's city, worshiping in the "true" temple. Also, the people of the northern kingdom had intermarried with the Assyrians, and were now called "Samaria." Never mind that in Judah they were sacrificing their children to idols in the morning and then offering sacrifices in the temple in the evening. The two sections of the nation are compared to adulterous sisters, lulled away from their husbands by the youth, strength, power and wealth of the nations around them. Do those sound like anything our culture chases after today? Far from giving Judah more credit for their location and heritage, God actually calls them the worse of the two sisters, stating that she did not learn from the sins of her older sister, who strayed first.

I find it interesting that God gives Ezekiel the analogy of adultery for the nation as he warns them of their impending judgement. Remember back in Leviticus- the punishment for committing adultery was death, for both the man and the woman. God was trying to paint a picture for the Israelites of just how costly their sin was. He also wanted them to have stories and images burned into their brains, so that when the events that Ezekiel predicted came to pass, they would remember what God told them before it happened. It would only serve as further proof that God is God- both for them and for us hundreds of years later.

Interestingly enough, God in flesh had a conversation hundreds of years later with an adulterous woman, from Samaria. Let's listen to part of their conversation, shall we?

When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” ⁸ (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)

The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.^[a]).....

“Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.”

Jesus declared, “Believe me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth.”

The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

Then Jesus declared, “I who speak to you am he.”

John 4: 7-10, 19-26

Do you think God got tired of the same old argument? For centuries it was handed down...worship here...worship there, we're better than they are...on and on and on! Remember that pot? The one that wouldn't come clean, and how we said that God could use the tough times in our lives to realign our priorities so we would see what was truly of value in our lives? Well, in case you were wondering, here is God giving a Samaritan their answer. They had been so intent on worship in the right place, that they missed who they were supposed to be worshipping! Are we lulled away by strength, power or wealth? Do we think we are "safe" from God's wrath because we are going to the "right" places and doing the "right" things? We need to refocus on the only thing that matters- God himself. Worship Him in Spirit and in truth. Let him burn away the dirt from your pot!